We're selling digital magazine circulation; are advertisers buying it?

As digital editions expand in importance at many different kinds of magazines -- ranging from b2b to the largest consumer lifestyle titles -- one of the key, so far unaddressed, issues is whether the advertising buyers accept replica editions as legitimate paid circulation.

The question is addressed in an article in Mediaweek, which points out by the end of 2008, 110 U.S. titles reported nearly 1 million paid digital subs. That number will probably increase with the June release of first half ABC audit data.

Cosmopolitan magazine, for instance, is the second biggest user of digital subs -- 99,012 in the second half of 2009 or about 3.4% of its 2.9 million paid circulation.

More than half of those copies were sponsored, or free to the recipient. In the same period, the magazine exceeded its rate base by 26,683 copies, meaning about three-fourths of the digital copies counted towards the rate base. A Hearst representative pointed out that the copies are ABC-approved and that many of its readers like getting their information online.

Publishers insist that their digital copies haven't been an issue for advertisers. The publisher of Saveur says that digital copies still represent a quality audience, though most of them come with the purchase of a membership or a ticket to an event. Saveur's 21,601 sponsored digital copies accounts for 6.6% of its 328,899 circ.

Scott Daly, executive vp, executive media director, Dentsu America, said he sees “absolutely no value whatsoever” to digital editions and that if he were negotiating with a magazine that sells digital subs as part of its circ, “we would probably discount it, because a digital version of a magazine is not the reason we’d go into a magazine.”

Robin Steinberg, senior vp, director of print investment and activation, MediaVest, said while digital editions hold potential for marketers, more needs to be known about the difference in engagement and take-action levels between readers of print and digital editions. “To serve these copies as part of the rate base without understanding the difference is questionable,” said Steinberg.

In a response to the Mediaweek article, Catharine Taylor in BNet Media says the definition of digital replica magazines as "electronic products" to distinguish them from magazines' free websites, look like a way to "game the system".

I found a Web site where this was being promoted to U.K. magazine publishers like this: “Digital brochures are now integral to many publishers’ circulation figures, which has a direct impact on attracting advertisers.” In other words, use a digital brochure to pump up those sagging circulation figures!...As circulation figures pretty much exist for advertisers, without further delineation, it seems like the advertisers are the ones that are being sold, and what they’re being sold is a bill of goods.